House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, right, talks with Pat Mitchell, President and CEO of the Paley Center for Media at the Paley Center in New York on Tuesday, April 3. (Photo: Michael Priest Photography)Calling for a return to civility in politics, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi on Monday urged women to become more active in their communities, to "know your power," and to "value your experience."

"There are many problems. And I think there is one answer," she told a small crowd at New York's Paley Center for Media. "Any subject you can name is enhanced by the increased participation of women. It's important to have that mix. Not to say one is better than another. It's just important to have the mix."

The public is ready for a woman president, she said, and her pick for 2016 is Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. "She would be a fabulous president," she said. "She's brilliant. She's talented. She has knowledge and judgement. She's a strategic thinker, she attracts people to her -- and she has stamina. She would be absolutely great."

Pelosi -- a Catholic mother of five, a 25-year veteran of Congress, and the first female speaker of the House of Representatives -- has

By Tierney Sneed

This week network morning television programming battles it out as ABC's Good Morning America tries to eclipse NBC's Today in a ratings war. Katie Couric, once a host of Today before departing for the anchor spot on CBS's evening news (she has since left CBS after failing to boost its ratings), guest co-hosts at Good Morning America all week, stepping in for Robin Roberts, who is on vacation. Today is taking the threat head on by inviting Sarah Palin, a regular on Fox News, to co-host Tuesday.

[See a collection of political cartoons on Sarah Palin.]

Few can forget Katie Couric's CBS interview with Palin when the former Alaskan governor stumbled on the most basic questions about policy and current events. On Monday's Today, Matt Lauer, who once shared the Today stage with Couric, jabbed Palin by referencing a notorious moment in the Couric interview when Palin struggled to name a single newspaper she read. "What are you doing to prepare?" Lauer asked in a

By Meghan Casserly

The short-term and far-reaching economic effects of your $50 a month Ortho Tri Cyclen

A new working paper from the University of Michigan draws another heavy underline on the importance of access to birth control for women's long-term earning potential. After cross-examining wage and education data for women born between 1943 and 1954, economist Martha Bailey estimates that one third of women's wage gains since the 1960s were made possible by the Pill.

Economists, sociologists, and just plain women have long understood the correlation between contraception and career, but it's been difficult to put numbers to. "The difficulty of parsing the Pill's effect on women's careers relates to the timing of its appearance," said Bailey, the chief researcher of the working paper in a statement. "By cause or coincidence, the pill's diffusion coincided with important changes in norms and ideas about women's work and the end of the baby boom."

The Right To Choose And The Tyranny

Pro-life activists protest at the March for Life rally in January in Washington, DC. (Photo: Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images.)Todd Stave understands why protesters target the clinic he leases to a late-term abortion provider in Germantown, Maryland. He owns the building, not the business inside it, but still: Even though the protesters' signs are graphic and disturbing, and even though does not agree with the point they're trying to make, he acknowledges that they should be able to protest his tenant's work.

[Related: Georgia lawmaker counters abortion bill with one restricting vasectomies]

"Totally appropriate. It's their right," he told Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak. "They are protected by the First Amendment. And outside the clinic is probably the most appropriate place for them to express their views."

But when the protesters showed up at his daughter's middle school in Rockville, Maryland, last September, they took things too far.

One large banner featured his photo, his name, his phone number, and the words "Please STOP the Child Killing" -- even though he's the clinic's landlord, not the

By Susan Milligan

Why would a sitting governor who has decent approval ratings at home and who seems to actually enjoy running his or her state want to be on a presidential ticket?

The public, and especially the media, tend to be particularly hard on governors, who are, especially in a national campaign, the poster children for their respective states. We unfairly attach to the governor all of his or her state's problems and all of the state's unkind caricatures. Bill Clinton was dismissed as "the failed governor of a small state" (and "small" was meant to be as much of a sneer as "failed"). Fellow Arkansan Mike Huckabee, also the state's governor, was derided as a hick who might have had a quick wit and a compelling weight loss story, but who had no business being among the big boys of presidential politics. then Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Texas Gov. Rick Perry were ridiculed as unsophisticated and lacking in basic smarts.

[See a collection of political cartoons on Sarah

By Mary Kate Cary

All eyes in Washington were on this week's oral arguments before the Supreme Court on the individual mandate in the president's healthcare reform legislation. One of the first mandates stemming from the law's 2,700 pages has been a very controversial one: the ruling by the Department of Health and Human Services that forces all insurance plans to offer free morning-after drugs, sterilization, and contraception with only a very narrow exemption for religious organizations. The conventional wisdom is that the fight over the contraception coverage badly hurt Republicans, who Democrats have delighted in saying are running a "war on women," who face a "health crisis" due to lack of access to contraception.

The conventional wisdom is wrong. Contrary to what you might read in the press, it's actually the Democrats who are being hurt and Republicans who have been handed a defining issue for the fall election, especially among women.

[See a collection of political

Michele Bachmann speaks to a Tea Party crowd protesting at the Supreme Court on Tuesday.Republican congressman Steve King of Iowa supports banning federal funding for Planned Parenthood, is in favor of mandatory ultrasounds before abortion for any reason, and says that states should be able to ban birth control. But on Tuesday he stood in front of the Supreme Court, where justices are debating the constitutionality of parts of the Obama administration's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and told them to "Keep your law off my body!"

"I don't want my body commandeered," he told the crowd, ignoring his own well-documented positions on women's health issues and reproductive rights. "You are the one that must be able to manage that health. Nobody else should be sticking their nose in it."

Should race even be an issue when it comes to gay marriage?Earlier this month, the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin sparked a public discussion about race and justice. Earlier this week, movie-goers reacted in ugly ways to the fact that certain characters in "The Hunger Games" were black, even though they were described as "dark-skinned" in the book. Now, confidential memos from the National Organization for Marriage have surfaced, showing that the group intended to make race a major issue in both the upcoming elections and the ongoing debate about gay marriage.

The memos went public as part of an investigation by the state of Maine into the National Organization for Marriage's campaign-finance activities, The Daily Beast reported, and the contents make it clear that undermining President Barack Obama is an important part of their strategy for protecting traditional marriage -- and they plan to do so by driving "a wedge between gays and blacks," their memos say.

In a detailed 2009 document, "The National Strategy for Winning the